Description
This article profiles women coaches who have made a difference in the field of collegiate sports. The article discusses the challenges these coaches face, as well as the successes they have achieved. These women are important role models for female athletes and for other coaches.
An in-depth look at the challenging lives of women collegiate coaches, Hard Fought Victories profiles coaches from a wide variety of sports--basketball, volleyball, tennis, softball, track, cross country, soccer, rowing, field hockey, lacrosse, cross country, and ice hockey--at U.S. colleges. Among them are older women who have witnessed enormous changes in conditions for female athletes and know firsthand the history behind those changes, as well as younger women just starting out in the coaching field, whose lives offer a glimpse of the future for female collegiate athletics. Although coaches often receive less media attention than athletes, women college coaches are, in fact, pivotal figures within the college sports world. As a group, these women have worked hard to bring about positive changes for female athletes and have fought for equitable treatment for themselves as sports professionals. They are important role models and mentors for female athletes and often for other coaches as well. They are women who confront the still prevalent prejudices about female sports, and in some cases women who manage to "have it all" by combining parenting with their busy working lives. Hard Fought Victories offers inspiring stories about the strong, competitive women who have helped reshape women's collegiate sports. The coaches profiled include Tara VanDerveer, the 1996 Olympic basketball coach and winner of two national championships at Stanford; ice hockey coaches Digit Murphy, who was involved in the ground-breaking Title IX lawsuit against Brown University, and Shannon Miller, the only female head coach for women's ice hockey at the 1998 Olympics; national championship winning track coach Beverly Kearney and championship winning softball coach Margie Wright; head coach and mother Muffet McGraw, whose 2001 team brought Notre Dame its first-ever women's basketball championship; and many more women who coach at both well-known and less prominent colleges across the country.
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